Officer: 'A lot of blood' in escape try

Testimony backs Curran trial photos

Dec. 14, 2013

Justin Curran

Written by

Roberto Cruz

Poughkeepsie Journal

Prosecutors in the escape trial of convicted murderer Justin Curran presented several crime scene photographs of a blood-stained elevator floor and walls — in addition to testimony — to a jury in Dutchess County Court on Friday.

Curran, 37, of Staatsburg, is accused of assaulting two correction officers and a court officer inside that elevator on March 22, in a botched attempt to escape from the Dutchess County Courthouse. He’s charged with two counts of first-degree escape and six counts of second-degree assault, felonies, in the incident.

The plan was to transport Curran from the courthouse back to the county jail, said correction Officer Michael Lee.

Lee had just secured three other inmates in a van for transport and waited by the elevator door for Officer Donald Prusakowski, who was in charge of getting Curran.

“When the door opened, they were on the floor of the elevator,” said Lee, a correction officer for approximately 25 years. “There was a lot of blood.”

Lee said he immediately ran into the elevator to help subdue Curran. According to court documents and testimony, Curran had slipped out of his waist restraints and struck Prusakowski in the face and head.

For 12 minutes, the struggle continued. Curran was on the bottom of the pile, but because of the way his restraints were set up, the officers were unable to secure his arms behind his back.

“I grabbed his head and pushed that down,” Lee said.

Lee said Curran complained that “he couldn’t breathe” and that “he was having a seizure.”

Prusakowski had trouble seeing because of the blood in his eyes, Lee added.

Sheriff’s Office Detective Kurt Twaddell said he was sent to investigate the crime scene later that day.

“What I noticed right away was that the elevator was covered in blood,” Twaddell told Senior Assistant District Attorney Ed Whitesell.

Twaddell said he collected evidence such as several bloody papers on the floor and a pair of orange inmate shoes at the scene of the alleged assault.

But he wasn’t able to collect any video footage from inside the elevator, because he said he “was told the camera hadn’t worked in quite some time.”

Curran’s attorney, Bruce Petito, asked him if he checked it himself, to which Twaddell said no.

Dutchess Jail Administrator George Krom was last to testify Friday morning.

He confirmed the camera wasn’t working the day of Curran’s escape attempt, but said it’s since been repaired.

“We found out after the incident that it was not operational,” Krom said.

The attorneys in the trial are scheduled to present their closing arguments at 1:30 p.m. Monday. The jury is then expected to begin deliberation on a verdict.

On Dec. 3, a jury of eight men and four women found Curran guilty of stabbing his 67-year-old neighbor, Laurie Ferguson, to death in the Mobile Manor Trailer Park more than a year earlier.

He also is charged with kidnapping his ex-girlfriend and their four daughters a week after the killing.